neo materialism - part 1

8/14/2019 NEO Materialism - Part 1

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language involves materials, colors, shapes,scale, and composition, what is it exactly thatthe objects say? In the section of Capital titled ÒTheFetishism of Commodities and the SecretThereof,Ó Marx demonstrates that the commodityis a materialization of our social relations:

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very

trivial thing, and easily understood. Itsanalysis shows that it is, in reality, a veryqueer thing, abounding in metaphysicalsubtleties and theological niceties. So faras it is a value in use, there is nothingmysterious about it, whether we consider itfrom the point of view that by its propertiesit is capable of satisfying human wants, orfrom the point that those properties are theproduct of human labor. It is as clear asnoon-day that man, by his industry,changes the forms of the materials

furnished by Nature, in such a way as tomake them useful to him. The form of wood,for instance, is altered, by making a tableout of it. Yet, for all that, the tablecontinues to be that common, every-daything, wood. But, so soon as it steps forthas a commodity, it is changed intosomething transcendent. It not only standswith its feet on the ground, but, in relationto all other commodities, it stands on itshead, and evolves out of its wooden braingrotesque ideas, far more wonderful thanÒtable-turningÓ ever was.4

According to Marx, the commodity is comprisedof two values: use value and exchange value. Butthere is a third, intrinsic value that stems fromexchange value, and it is here that the total andunconditional interdependency betweencommodities is found. The commodity is thething that always feels at home. Whereas mansuffers from a folkloristic and identity-dependent conception of foreignness,acquaintance, history, tradition, and alienation,and plants and animals have difficulty

acclimatizing, the commodity is a mode of beingthat is free of all these. It is first and foremost apresence.

Their World, Not Ours

Maybe the time when we will be able to discussthis civilization of private property in the pasttense is just around the corner, but for now it isstill present in all its extremes. Private propertyremains the cornerstone of an all-encompassingliberal concept of our civilization, and it is thekey to understanding our relations with each

other and with objects, as well as betweenobjects. It is a conceptual framework based on

negation, on exclusion Ð something can be mineonly if it excludes others who might otherwiseown it. Yet the logic of ownership that has guidedour understanding of the world of things nolonger answers to the challenge. Mostcommodities live longer than their creators andconsumers alike Ð for even a simple plastic bagwill outlive us all many, many times over. Ascommodities ourselves, even our bodily organs

can outlive us. Therefore, as all objects thatenter into this world are commodities, we mustrealize that this is not our world, but rathertheirs. We dwell in the world of commodities.

In Michael BayÕs blockbuster filmTransformers (2007), beings from another planetfight for control of Earth. As the mythology in thefilm has it, these beings arrived on Earth insearch of a new planet to settle; upon arrival,considering how to properly disguise themselves,the aliens concluded that cars and weaponscomprised the main forms of existence on the

planet, and they proceeded to assume thoseforms. While on one level this can be taken as amere fiction, the number of cars in the world nowapproaches two billion, and countries such asGermany produce more cars in a year thannewborn babies. Can anyone blame theTransformers for seeing Earth as a planet of cars,and not of humans? Guy Ben-NerÕs video Stealing Beauty (2008),shot without permission in IKEA stores acrossthe world, focuses on private propertyÕs relationto the family. In the video, Ben-Ner, his wife, andhis two children inhabit IKEAÕs various domesticsettings as if they were in their own home. Whileshoppers pass through the frame, a series ofdomestic scenarios play out. The son is caughtstealing in school and the father (whomasturbates compulsively) offers the son alesson in moral conduct by explaining theconcepts of private property, family, and value.While Ben-NerÕs son washes dishes in a displaysink with invisible (but audible) water, hisdaughter reads from Friedrich EngelsÕ The Originof the Family, Private Property, and the State:

So, the original meaning of the word family,first coined in Ancient Rome, did not havethe sentimental and domestic meaning weattach to it today. For the Romans the wordÒfamilyÓ did not even refer to the marriedpair and their children, but to the slaves.ÒFamulusÓ means a domestic slave.ÒFamiliaÓ means the total number of slavesbelonging to one man. This was the newRoman social organism whose head, thefather, ruled over wife, kids, and slaves.And thus, transition into full private

property was accomplished parallel withtransition to monogamy. The single family

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Guy Ben-Ner, Stealing Beauty , 2007. Screen capture single channel video, color with sound, dvd 17' 40'', courtesy ofPostmasters gallery, New York.

became the economic unit of society.Sentimentality and love came only later, toseal the deal.

The liberal view of the tension betweencommodification and family is not the point, ofcourse. Following Marx and Engels, Ben-Nersees private property as the very basis of thefamily. For him, the family feels no aversion to

living in an IKEA store; rather, it is already there.Standardized consumption outlets such as IKEAanswer to the same ancient logic from which thefamily originates. Richard HamiltonÕs sarcasticquestion, ÒJust what is it that makes todayÕshomes so different, so appealing?Ó is answeredby Ben-Ner, who states that our homes are notours to begin with Ð we inhabit the world ofanother. IKEAÕs objects do not furnish our world,we dwell in theirs.

Guy Ben-NerÕs interest in objects and theirfunction has appeared and reappeared

throughout his work. Video works such asBerkeleyÕs Island (1999), Moby Dick (2000),Household (2001), Elia (2003), Treehouse Kit(2005), IÕd Give It To You But I Borrowed It (2007)include, among other things, a kitchen thatbecomes the deck of a ship and a desert island, afridge that becomes a book, a crib that

transforms into a prison, a table that changesinto a chair, a man that becomes an ostrich,objects that become a bicycle, IKEA furniturethat turns into a tree. These are turns from thelinguistic to the economic that require a changein the position of the subject: it is no longerhumans that conduct things; rather, humans areconducted within them. Stealing Beauty endswith the two children addressing the camera

directly with the following speech:

Children of the world, unite. Release thefuture from the shackles of the past. Mypeers, it is our time to steal. Not in order togain property but in order to lose respectfor it. Property is like a ghost. You cannotpossess it without being possessed by it.Steal and let others steal. Let propertymove freely from place to place so it willnot haunt your home. Steal from the localsupermarket. Steal from the city! Steal

from the state! Steal from your parents!And above all, donÕt accept inheritance Ðsteal it. Rob your parents and rid yourself ofpromises you will have to keep. Children ofthe world, unite. Release the future fromthe shackles of the past.

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Private property is the basic category ofcivilization, and it is through inheritance thatprivate property is passed on, thus creating itsown history of civilization. Freedom fromproperty and inheritance can free us from thishistory and present the prospect of a newcivilization, with the relation to, and between,objects remaining a primary anchor. For thepurposes of tracing our understanding of objects

today, however, it is important to understand thecategory of private property to be an insufficientone.

Patek Philippe ad.

A well-known advertisement by luxurywristwatchÐmaker Patek Philippe seems to

suggest a way into the paradox of ownership andinheritance by identifying the explicit tensionbetween the existence of the object and theownership of it:

You never actually own a Patek Philippe.You merely look after it for the nextgeneration.5

By consecrating inheritance, the advertisementasserts that nothing can be owned Ð only lookedafter. Not only can we no longer believe in the

myth of ownership, but we also require a newethics for using objects Ð for taking care, looking

after, and watching over them. If we examine historical events in relation tothe commodity, they can reveal an alternatehistory. For example, we find that the FrenchRevolution, as a revolutionary demand for privateproperty to answer the bourgeois call Laissez

passer! Laissez faire!, was also a demand for thefree passage of commodities through trade. Inthe spirit of the Declaration of the Rights of Man

and of the Citizen (1789), in which privateproperty is a sanctified right (according to articleXVII in the declaration), commodities blow withthe wind, and every place is their home.6 Andunlike people, commodities such as cars, trains,and airplanes are allowed smoother, and quicker,passage.

Another example can be found in theEuropean Union, which we usually regard asdating back to the European EconomicCommunity. But if we look again at the eventsduring and following World War II, we find that,

contrary to the common belief that theunification of Europe started with the Treaties ofRome in 1957 Ð signed by the leaders of France,West Germany, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands,and Luxembourg as a result of the scars of WorldWar II Ð the union was born, from the perspectiveof the commodity, in the Vichy governmentÕscollaboration with the Nazis in June 1940, whenFrance and Germany worked together for thefirst time after generations of hostility. Customsregulations were softened, since part of Francewas occupied by the Nazis and another part wascollaborating with them. With the termination ofWorld War II, the relationship simply continued.Thus the commodity teaches us history Ð theprovocative truth it tells us is that the EuropeanUnion is also a continuation of the collaborationbetween the Nazis and the Fascists. And insofaras people now have free passage, they aresentenced to be led only as commodities: right ofpassage is given to them either as members of aworkforce or as tourists. The familiar questionÒbusiness or pleasure?Ó comes to stand for thelimited categories through which movement inthe world is allowed.

Everything that comes into this world doesso as a commodity. The world belongs to thecommodity, not to us. And today it would be hardto deny that we have more intimate relationswith commodities than we do with each other. Ona social level, the commodity can be consideredpart of a networked economy of exploitation:from design and creation, through marketing anddistribution, to consumption and waste.According to Marxian tradition, the fetishism ofcommodities empties them of meaning, hidingthe real social relations invested in them through

human labor. This allows the imaginary,ideological, and symbolic social relations to be,

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in Sut JhallyÕs terms, Òinjected into theconstruction of meaning.Ó7 Jhally maps the newmeanings advertising produces throughcommodity fetishism in four successive religiousstages: 1) utility/idolatry, in which commoditiesare freed from being merely utilitarian things; 2)symbolization/iconology, in which commoditiesserve as abstract representations of socialvalues; 3) personification/narcissism, in which

they are intimately connected with the world ofinterpersonal relations; and 4)lifestyle/totemism, in which the first threestages merge to define the group under asingular lifestyle.8

Money is the ultimate representationalsystem of value in this civilization. Marx hasdemonstrated that it is through the objectivesymbol of money value that commodity fetishismconceals labor, and thus social relations. In spiteof the fact that the producerÕs labor is the sourceof the commoditiesÕ value, within the context of

the market the producer thinks of the fruit of hisor her own labor as a consumer would Ð asobjects to be bought and sold. In this way, thecommodity echoes the workersÕ silence. As DavidHarvey puts it, Òcapital is not a thing, but rather aprocess in which money is perpetually sent insearch of more money.Ó9 As an object, then, thecommodity materializes labor as capital Ðoperating as both thing and process. Theuniversality of money becomes easily exchangedfor the particularity of the commodity. But whenthe commodityÕs particularity must be convertedinto the universality of money, things becomemuch more problematic.10 Interestingly enough,the commodity actually loses its money value atthe moment of payment Ð as soon as thecommodity is purchased, it is on its way tobecoming waste. According to Marx, the commodity musthave human labor invested in it. But although itis the result Ð and the reflection Ð of socialrelations, the commodity, be it goods or services,fetishizes itself through the equivalence ofmoney value, presenting itself as a relationbetween objects Ð kicking men out of the

equation, so to speak. But in a consumereconomy in which cause and effect can no longerbe traced Ð for example, when there are morecommodities than human beings Ð we can nolonger believe that commodities are merematerializations of our social relations. Whilethey may still be this, they also have a social lifeof their own that has included us in it.11 MarxÕsquote above seems to suggest that we areactually a materialization of their relations.Consider our bodies Ð blood sugar levels, kidneystones, cholesterol levels, or cancerous

pollution. In our relations with commodities, weno longer have the ability to decide between

production or consumption, improvisation orfunction, profit or loss. It is in this way that, aspart of the social relations that materializewithin it, the commodity gains a life of its own Ðbeyond even the means of its invention: design,manufacturing, production, marketing,shipment, disposal, and evacuation.

The Exhibition

In his seminal 1967 essay ÒArt and Objecthood,ÓMichael Fried recognized the Minimalist(Òliteralist,Ó according to Fried) objectÕs tendencytowards anthropomorphism. It is an art objectthat aspires to be a subject associated with theviewerÕs space, that has a presence equal to thatof man in the space:

literalist art stakes everything on shape asa given property of objects, if not indeed asa kind of object in its own right. It aspiresnot to defeat or suspend its own

objecthood, but on the contrary to discoverand project objecthood as such.12

Paradoxically, it is the critical tools used byformalists (and those leaning towards mysticismin all things) that allow for an entry point into thelanguage of things. It is taken for granted that artobjects speak Ð with us and amongstthemselves. Neo-materialist formal languagescenter on questions of material, shape, volume,scale, composition, and authorship only throughthe commodity character of objects. But at theend of the day, literalist/minimalist attemptsmaintain the logic of cause and effect, theduality of object and subject. They tell us thatthe artist created an object aspiring to apresence equal to that of the viewer. WhereasMinimalism is anthropocentric, commoditiesexist prior to the viewer and to the artist.

Beyond being a narrative and an event, theexhibition is a form of exiting. As soon as youenter an exhibition, you walk through it as if youwere on your way out. In this sense, theexhibition and the commodity share anallegorical relation. When we wish to describe

what is being exhibited, we usually use the wordsÒobject,Ó Òpiece,Ó Òartifact,Ó Òthing,Ó Òproduct,Óand even Òcommodity.Ó OneÕs preference dependson the discourse to which the descriptionbelongs. ÒObjectÓ is used commonly incontemporary art, as it is regarded asintrinsically constitutive of subjects. ÒObjectÓ isan interesting word, for in Hebrew it means ÒwillÓ(chefetz Ð similar to Òhaving an objectiveÓ inEnglish). ÒPieceÓ is also common in this context,as it introduces a maker, a master of that piece,suggesting the thing to be passive and

transparent, a mere projection of its makerÕsintention. ÒThingÓ is used mainly in relation to a

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mute presence that calls for contextualization.ÒProductÓ refers to a process of creation,bringing with it an impression of finality, a faitaccompli. And ÒartifactÓ relates to an outcome ora residue. ÒCommodityÓ is used primarily in thecontext of a critique of the market, but I believethat this term should include all of the termsmentioned above.13 In a world where everythingis already a commodity, ÒobjectÓ and ÒthingÓ are

in this respect terms that attempt to cleanse thecommodity of the chains of its birth, thus hidingits history and the means by which it appears inthe world.

In this prefabricated world, one can claimthat all things are commodities: objects, land,air, garbage, debt, action, and so forth. And thedouble-sided nature of the exhibition can also beunderstood in terms of the commodity Ð like thecommodity, the exhibition is dependent yetindependent, it is social and yet it is indifferent,it is inside us yet it is not of us.14 Objects in an

exhibition are characterized by a suspendedduration of being, allowing them an existencebeyond use and exchange value. As both a retinaland non-retinal viewing mechanism, theexhibition embodies a much wider aestheticexperience that allows us to view commoditiesas they are. More than in any other context,commodities are most true to themselves as art.

!

To be continued in ÒNeo-Materialism, PartTwo: The Unreadymade.Ó

Joshua Simon is a curator and writer based in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. The three-part essay published on e-flux journalis a section from his upcoming book on Neo-Materialism. Simon is co-founding editor of MaayanMagazine and The New&Bad Art Magazine and he isthe editor of Maarvon (Western) Ð New FilmMagazine all based in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Currently, he is aPhD candidate at the Curatorial/Knowledge programat the Visual Cultures department, Goldsmithscollege, University of London. He is the editor of UnitedStates of Israel-Palestine forthcoming in

the Solution series by Sternberg Press. Among hispoetry projects are Red: Anthology of Hebrew and

Arabic Class Poetry (May Day 2007), and Out! Againstthe Attack on Gaza (Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Beirut andCairo, 2008-2009). He is the co-editor of the book ofcensored exhibition The Aesthetics of Terror (ChartaArt Books, 2009). Select curatorial projectsinclude: Sharon (Tel Aviv 2004), Blanks (CCA, Tel Aviv2005), The Rear - the first Herzliya Biennial of Contemporary Art (2007), Come to Israel, ItÕs Hot and

Wet and We Have The Humus! (Storefront for Art andArchitecture, NYC 2008), Internazionale! (The Left Bank- Israeli Communist Party Culture Club, 2008) The

Invisible Hand (Sommer Contemporary Art, 2009). Hislatest curatorial project The Unreadymade opens atFormContent, London UK on December 3rd 2010.

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1Giorgio Agamben, Stanzas: Wordand Phantasm in WesternCulture, trans. Ronald L.Martinez (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press,1993), 48.

2See Sven LŸtticken, ÒArt andThingness, Part One: BretonÕsBall and DuchampÕs Carrot,Ó e-flux journal, no. 13 (February2010); ÒArt and Thingness, Part

Two: Thingification,Ó e-flux journal, no. 15 (April 2010); andÒArt and Thingness, Part Three:The Heart of the Thing is theThing We DonÕt Know,Ó e-flux

journal, no. 16 (May 2010).

3LŸtticken, ÒArt and Thingness,Part OneÓ and W. J. T. MitchellWhat Do Pictures Want? TheLives and Loves of Images(Chicago: Chicago UniversityPress, 2005), 112.

4Karl Marx, ÒThe Fetishism ofCommodities and the SecretThereof,Ó in Capital (1867),

available athttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm%23S4 (accessed June 29,2010).

5I thank Noam Yuran for drawingmy attention to this ad.

6See Georges Lefebvre, ÒTheBourgeois Revolution,Ó in TheFrench Revolution, vol 1, trans.Elizabeth Moss Evanson (NewYork: Columbia University Press,1962), 102Ð116.

7

Sut Jhally, The Codes of Advertising: Fetishism and thePolitical Economy of Meaning inthe Consumer Society (New York:Psychology Press, 1990), 51.

8Ibid., 201Ð202.

9David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2010), 40.

10Harvey, The Enigma of Capital,106.

11See for example ArjunAppaduraiÕs notion of theanthropology of things inÒCommodities and the Politics ofValue,Ó in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in CulturalPerspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai(Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1986), 3Ð64

12Michael Fried, ÒArt andObjecthood,Ó in Art andObjecthood: Essays and Reviews(Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1996), 151.

13My aim here is to preserve the

Marxian notion that to someextent, the commodity has amind of its own, and that thisÒmindÓ is actually what we seein the exhibition. For a criticalanalysis of use value andexchange value, and fetishism inrelation to labor, see the chapterÒFetishism and IdeologyÓ in JeanBaudrillard, For a Critique of thePolitical Economy of the Sign,trans. Charles Levin (New York:Telos, 1981), 88Ð101. For adiscussion of various ÒpureÓ and

ÒlooseÓ definitions of thecommodity between exchangeand value, see Arjun Appadurai,ÒCommodities and the Politics ofValue.Ó

14Jean Baudrillard describescommodities as seductive yetlacking desire. See Baudrillard,Fatal Strategies, trans. PhilippeBeitchman and W. G. J.Niesluchowski (Los Angeles:Semiotext(e), 2008).

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neo materialism - part 1

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